THE HOUSE ON SPACE TIME LANE
CHAPTER FOUR
Guess Who's Coming For Pizza
By Galen Hardesty

~*~

Daria turned to Jane. "It says… 'Antonius Stradivarius Cremonensis faciebat Anno 1687," she said, a note of wonder in her voice.

Jane nodded. "The cello, too," she said. With one accord, the two left the room, lest they break something priceless.

As they headed across the dining room, Daria asked, "Jane, was that room like what you were thinking it would be when you opened the door?"

Jane passed into the kitchen. "Ha! Not even! I was thinking guitars, a keyboard, and a drum set, like Spiral would play if they could afford to trade up."

"It was exactly like I pictured it," Daria said quietly, with a look as of one who glimpses enormous implications. "Except I didn't imagine that the violin would be a Strad."

Jane gave Daria a sideways look. "What do you mean? Haven't you been in there lots of times?"

"No, Jane. I've never seen that room before. This house doesn't have a music room, or rather, it didn't until the second you said the words 'music room' a few minutes ago.

Now Jane wore the enormous implications look. She seemed to settle on one quite rapidly, though. "Well then, come on, Daria, let's go find the treasury!"

Grinning, Daria replied, "Whoa there, big fella! Before you start wallowing in the Morgendorffer family jewels, I believe we should give this more thought. There are probably a lot of hidden implications here that could sneak up and bite us. You know what they say--- there's no such thing as a free lunch."

"C'mon, Daria. You just got yourself two free Stradivarii."

"Yeah, but from where? Just because Interpol hasn't surrounded the house yet doesn't mean they won't. And look at the Ruykelderfers. They got themselves a free vacation in the south Pacific. If you'd seen the expressions on their faces just before the red hot ash swallowed them up---"

"All right- you may, may, I say, have a point. But…" Jane got an 'aha!' face. "Hey! I know what this reminds me of!" Jane waved a finger in the air. "Remember that weird guy and that blue telephone booth-looking thing? The one we went to the Dalek world in?"

Daria brightened. "The TARDIS! Yeah, this is kind of like the inside of that thing. I didn't get to explore it, but it was a lot bigger on the inside than on the outside, and I seem to remember that some of those doors didn't always lead to the same room. And that would tie in with the time travel too!"

"Exactly! I bet that Doctor guy could tell us what's up with this house! You should ask him!"

"I'd love to, but I can't just fling open a door and expect the Doctor to leap out." Daria flung open the laundry room door as she spoke, and the Doctor leapt out, slamming it shut behind him. "AAAH!"

"EEEK!"

"GAAH!"

"My word!"

He looked the same as last time she'd seen him. Wavy brown hair under a top hat, a rather long oddly-tailored brown coat, a very long multicolored knit scarf. He somehow reminded Daria of a young Harpo Marx. "Hello, Doctor" she said, a trifle diffidently. "I hope I didn't take you away from anything important."

"Truth be told, you may have taken me away from my death scene. A group of Daleks had somehow managed to cut me off from my TARDIS and... Hold on a bit. How did you take me away, and to where?"

"We were just talking about you, and I opened that door, and you popped out. This is my house, in Lawndale."

The Doctor cautiously opened the door Daria had indicated, and saw only a laundry room. "Lawndale? The United States? Earth circa 2000 AD?" Daria nodded. The Doctor blinked a couple of times, then said, "You have quite a reach, Daria. It is Daria, is it not?" Daria smiled and nodded again, a bit surprised he'd remembered her. "I was seventy-three light years from here, and several millennia in the past."

"Wow. I guess I'd be proud if I'd actually done anything."

"I am here. That is a not inconsiderable thing. Many have tried to put the arm on the Doctor, and few have succeeded," he said, sounding a bit miffed. "So tell me, Daria, where is your TARDIS, and how did you come by it?"

Daria turned to her sister. "Quinn, would you order another pizza, please? This may take a while, and we'll probably need some brain food."

Turning back to face the Doctor's intense gaze, Daria was reminded that this was a powerful alien being, a being who could be expected to be protective of his species' time travel abilities, and unfavorably disposed towards other species' acquisition of those abilities. "If I have a TARDIS, I'm certainly not aware of it. Jane had just mentioned how this house resembles your TARDIS in some ways, and we were wondering if you might be able to shed some light on that. That's how your name came up." Daria showed the Doctor what she had showed Jane, and told him of the previous owners and their rescue.

"Remarkable. Astounding, actually. Daria, there are many models of TARDIS, some more advanced than mine. But they all have control consoles or panels, on which we must input coordinates to travel through space and time." The Doctor acquired the look of one who has just been smitten by a thought. "Wait a minute. Except for one. It sat in a museum on Gallifrey for over a hundred years, but disappeared a few years ago. It was constructed from an incomplete set of plans thought to date back to the Golden Age, and finished out using the latest scientific advancements. It was supposed to be controllable directly by the mind of its pilot, but no one could be found who could control it well enough to actually take it out on a test run. Enough Time Lords were capable of partial control to prove that the concept worked and that all the machine's systems were functional, but..."

Just then, there was a knock on the patio door. The pizza girl stood outside. Daria motioned, and she came in and laid the pizza box on the table.

"Hi, Tananda. Just a second," said Daria, reaching in her pocket.

"Hi again, Daria," she replied, giving the Doctor an interested look. "Party?"

"Just an old friend popping by unexpectedly," Daria replied, counting out the money.

"Hey, I like the hair," said Jane. "That's a great shade."

"Thanks," she replied.

"You wouldn't by any chance be an Argyllian, would you? The doctor inquired.

"Uh, no, Libertarian, actually," Tananda replied, "But I keep an open mind."

Daria handed her some bills. "Thanks," she said, pocketing them. "Enjoy!" With a last curious look at the Doctor, she left the way she'd come in.

The four took seats at the table, and the Doctor continued: "To skip ahead a bit, it was concluded that we present day Time Lords were lacking in some mental faculty that the SuperTARDIS, as it became known, was designed to interface with, some faculty that we'd possessed in greater abundance in the Golden Age. Whether we were slowly declining, or whether we'd lost it suddenly for some unknown reason and were slowly regaining it is still hotly debated, but a consensus formed that we should find a way to recover what we'd lost, if possible. One of the ways this was attempted was a... for want of a better word... breeding program."

Seeing the looks this elicited, he nodded, "Yes, I know, and I agree. Many objections were advanced against it at the time. Many people didn't like the idea, for one reason or another, but a majority concluded that, as long as no coercion was involved, it was probably a good thing, overall. So a program was put together using appeals for the good of the species and a system of incentives.

The program continued down through the years, periodically publishing reports laden with statistics that purported to show progress. There was always controversy, but never enough to threaten to halt the program. The first families of Gallifrey were all solidly behind it, probably because their scores were higher than average, and they probably would have continued it on their own if the government had halted the official program. Others participated because they didn't want the first families to take it over. And then... tragedy struck.

"Tragedy? In a breeding program?" Jane was having trouble picturing what form such a tragedy might take.

The Doctor, seeing similar expressions on Daria and Quinn's faces, smiled a bit and continued. "Tragedy in a romantic sense. Mostly. A daughter of one of the first families had an astounding score, the highest of any Gallifreyan. A son of another first family also had a very high score, the highest of any eligible bachelor. They were the same age, their families were fairly close, and they'd known each other since childhood. It was believed that their offspring would have an excellent chance of being able to pilot the SuperTARDIS. The marriage was arranged. But here is where the tragedy shows up. The girl, whose name was Amalie, loved another, and the other loved her. Madly. Although the lad's score was pretty high, it wasn't very very high, and he wasn't a scion of one of the first families. His father was sort of a disreputable fellow.

Anyway, the families wouldn't hear of it. She was forbidden to marry her not-upper-class true love. The wedding plans went forward. And then she sprung her surprise. She was with child, by her lover.

Well, the haggis hit the propeller, as you earthlings say. Amalie's parents, and Rothian's, flew into towering snits. It was said that coercion was applied, that she was to be compelled to become un-pregnant and to wed Rothian, who, somewhat to his credit, began to object at this point. He really wanted to wed her, but not under these circumstances. But his objections, as hers, went unheeded.

But they hadn't actually imprisoned her, and it was then that she committed her act of desperation. She visited the museum where the SuperTARDIS was kept, and she stole it. She used the cause of her misfortune as her means of escape, or perhaps suicide. No one knew. It was reasoned that, if escape was her plan, and if she were in control of the superTARDIS, she would have picked up her lover Darvian. But, for whatever reason, she did not. Amalie and the SuperTARDIS vanished from the ken of the Time Lords, and into legend and romantic fantasy. Since then, we have searched time and space for her, and it, with no success."

Tears streamed down Quinn's cheeks. "Oh, that's so beautiful! And so sad! She leaps blindly into the void, rather than be unfaithful to her true love! It's better than Romeo and Juliet! If only it could have a happy ending. Doctor, do you think it's still possible that Amalie might be found alive?"

"Not long ago, I'd have said the chance was small indeed. Theoretically, the superTARDIS has a range greater than any other TARDIS. If it was partially or totally out of control, there's no logic the searchers could follow to guide their search. It could have wound up anywhere. Space is vast, especially throughout all of time. But I'd have kept looking, even while doing other things, for all my lives regardless of the odds."

"Because everyone loves Amalie, or because the Time Lords need the superTARDIS?" Daria asked.

The Doctor gave her a peculiar little half smile. "Both. But mostly because Amalie's lover Darvian is my son."